Only the most perfect weather and calm winds could have persuaded Robst to take the former course. To Prim’s untrained eye, dawn was breaking in a sky clear and calm, but Robst did not like the color of it, and soon claimed to see high rippling clouds that foretold stormy days. So the decision was made. They would sail beneath the watchtowers of Secondel.

They beached the boat on a scrap of rocky shore at the foot of Feller’s Point and spent part of the morning tidying up. The purpose of this was but vaguely explained, but Prim inferred that the Autochthons who held power in Secondel took a dim view of certain types of cargo that Robst might have carried, and certain ports of call where he might have put in, at one time or another. Therefore it was prudent to throw overboard any evidence to that effect. This took a while, as Firkin had a lot of crannies, and only Robst knew where to look. Prim passed the time looking up at the waste heap of Feller’s Point and trying to picture in her mind’s eye where Cairn, at the end of the Second Age, had trudged up out of the river (for it had been a mere river in those days) and gone to the top of the hill to talk to the hill and the tree.

Larger vessels passed them by as they worked. They had nearly finished their tidying up when one of these slackened its sails, put out its oars, and aimed its prow at them. Noting this, Robst squinted under his hand across bright water and gave the ship a good long look. It was of too deep draft to come very close, but presently it dropped a smaller rowboat. Two men climbed down into this and began to approach. The younger man pulling on the oars had his back to them, but the passenger was recognizable to Robst as some old seagoing acquaintance of his from the northern Bits. Soon they drew close enough to greet each other. They began a conversation, shouted back and forth across the water, in the language of Cloven. As far as Prim could make out, this began with the newcomer asking Robst if everything was quite all right, and Robst reassuring him that they had not beached because of any difficulty. Thus put at ease, the two skippers—for this man was pretty clearly the boss of the larger vessel—fell into chitchat, as the boat drew nearer, about where they had come from, where they were going, and what they were carrying. The words of Robst, though polite, seemed clipped and vague. The visitor was more talkative. His eyes kept scanning the length of Robst’s vessel, and whenever they did, his gaze seemed to snag and linger on Prim or Brindle. Eventually, despite Robst’s forced breeziness, he beached his rowboat nearby, obliging Robst to clamber down and walk over and afford him the courtesy of a handclasp and a few minutes’ conversation. In due time the visitors shoved off with a little help from Robst, who walked back to his boat with a bit of a pensive, even stormy, look about him. He invited Brindle to join him in his cabin. Brindle, who seemed to have a better idea than Prim as to what this was all about, insisted that she be part of it. So the three of them convened in Robst’s cabin, which, even with the hammock stowed and the little desk folded against the bulkhead, barely fit them.